Nobel prize in physics awarded to Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish for the first observations of gravitational waves
Double Negative is proud to share the news that our collaborator and dear friend Professor Kip Thorne is one of the recipients of the Nobel prize in physics.
Alongside his colleagues Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish, Kip played a leading role in the LIGO experiment, which first observed gravitational waves in 2015 – the product of a clash between two black holes over a billion light years from Earth.
Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts gravitational waves, but it was not until the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, was developed that science was able to confirm their existence.
Speaking about the award, Kip said: “The prize rightfully belongs to the hundreds of LIGO scientists and engineers who built and perfected our complex gravitational-wave interferometers, and the hundreds of scientists who found the gravitational-wave signals in LIGO’s noisy data and extracted the waves’ information.”
DNEG worked closely with Kip during its work on Christopher Nolan’s ‘Interstellar’. The ‘Double Negative Gravitational Renderer’ (DNGR) – the computer code used to create the iconic images of black holes and wormholes in the movie – was the result of a year-long collaboration between Kip and Double Negative Chief Scientist Oliver James.
Talking about the DNEG’s collaboration with Kip, ‘Interstellar’ VFX Supervisor Paul Franklin said: “Working so closely on ‘Interstellar’ with Kip Thorne to create spectacular visuals which were grounded in real science was an amazing experience. We are absolutely delighted that Kip’s ground-breaking work with the LIGO team has received the highest honour that the scientific community can bestow – congratulations to Kip Thorne and all of his colleagues!”
Find out more about DNEG’s Academy Award winning work on ‘Interstellar’ HERE.
And watch Paul Franklin’s TEDx talk about DNEG’s collaboration on ‘Interstellar’ with Kip Thorne here: